1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to printing technology and the application thereof, in particular, to three dimensional printing method and apparatus using the printing method.
2. Description of Related Art
As the progressing on computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), manufacturer has developed the three-dimensional (3D) printing technology, which can rapidly manufacture the object with the original design concept. The 3D printing technology actually is a general term for a series of rapid prototyping (RP) technology, in which the principles are the same based on manufacture by stacking layers. The RP machine forms, by scanning, a cross-sectional shape of a layer of the working piece on the XY plane and shifts on the Z axis by a step to have the layer thickness. The 3D working piece would be formed at the end. The 3D printing technology is not limited by the geometric shape and the advantage of the RP technology can be more extraordinarily seen as the structure of the working piece is more complicate. This can greatly reduce the manpower and the working time. Under the request with minimum time, the digital 3D model as designed by the 3D CAD software can be practically presented with touchable and the realistic feeling about the geometric curving shape. Further, the element assembly can be tested, and the function as possible can even be tested.
Generally, the 3D printing apparatus in current stage using the above RP method to form the 3D object is usually reading a digital 3D model to build the 3D object in correlation with the digital 3D model. However, for the complex object including embedded object incapable of being printed such as the mother board, electronic circuit or structure member having the metal part, it cannot be directly printed in an integrated single form by the 3D printing apparatus.
In the current application to fabricate such complex object, usually, only can the printable part of the complex object be printed by the 3D printing apparatus. The printing process performs until it reaches to a specific embedded location judged by the user, the printing process of the 3D printing apparatus is controlled to be pause and the embedded object being incapable of printing is manually disposed into the 3D object which has been partly printed, and the 3D printing apparatus is controlled again to continuously perform the printing process. This is not a friendly operation to the user as consideration on operation/convenient-application. In addition, if a shift occurs on the platform or the printing head of the 3D printing apparatus, caused by disposing the embedded object, then it may cause imprecision position for the subsequent action of the printing process. The operation precision of the 3D printing apparatus then decreases.